DVD Review - AC/DC: Family Jewels

It was May 1979 at the local skating rink. Just another gathering of the junior high tribe and the skating rink was the vibrating center of our social life with speed, music, and girls combining to form a perfect swirling gestalt.

I was part of the clique that thought it ran the scene when into this milieu wandered a group of strangers, older kids, and all wearing AC/DC Highway To Hell concert T-shirts. It was an intriguing assault on our hegemony, but they didn’t skate much or try to make time with our girlfriends so we quickly forgot about them as they spent most of their time playing the video games. What I couldn’t forget was those shirts. The iconographic image of Angus Young with devil horns appealed to a rebellious side I was just beginning to discover existed. I soon learned how to decode the meanings of rock and roll T shirts. The marketing people would be so happy to know I had yet to even hear a note of AC/DC’s music and I was hooked.

Soon I bought a midline priced Let There Be Rock and my tinny little phonograph’s volume was pushed to its limits. My KISS records were neglected as the adolescent adrenalin rush of AC/DC won supremacy of my small record collection. It was rock and roll in super electrified doses living up to their name; it just had me enthralled. Bon Scott’s vocals were so distinctive, sung with a constant leer and the Young brothers are the greatest guitar tandem ever. Listening to AC/DC saw me graduate from geek to freaky geek in a few short months. I may have got to the party late, but I was determined to see Bon Scott and the rest of the crew on their next tour.

We all know the rest of the story. I didn’t get to see AC/DC with Bon Scott on their next tour. AC/DC went from being the greatest rock and roll band in the world to being one of the best heavy metal outfits on the planet. Back In Black was an amazing record cleaved from tragedy, but it’s been an inexorable slide down ever since. The new DVD set Family Jewels is divided into a Bon Scott disc and a Brian Johnson disc and while I like both AC/DC eras (AC/DC’s slide down still results in better music than most), the Bon Scott years are by far the band’s creative peak.

Family Jewels is a chronological journey through AC/DC’s career with videos and live footage of the band’s most well-known songs. Many of the material on disc one has probably never been seen by the casual fan except for bits and pieces such as when VH1’s AC/DC Behind The Music showed bits from “Baby, Please Don’t Go” which opens disc one. It’s mainly notable due to Bon Scott’s ridiculous schoolgirl outfit even down to the panties he wears. Bon Scott in drag was a scary thing.

There isn’t a bum note at all on disc one, it’s all highlights, but some stand out more than others: Angus and his Chuck-Berry-on-speed act during “T.N.T.”, the footage of the band playing “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll)” in the back of a flat bed truck, “Let There Be Rock” filmed in a church with Bon Scott as the minister and Angus wearing a halo, and the horror shock end of “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)" where the front cover of that album is recreated.

Article Author: Wally Bangs

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